WTF is on my Mind?!

Recording from Cape Town, with Table Mountain out the window, my favorite mountain in the world. A second smear campaign is underway against me, this time aimed at my friends, my collaborators and the cult education crowd. My reaction this time surprised even me. After six days back in South Africa, I keep hearing the same thing from friends: their kids don't see color in the same way. So why...

Forensic psychologist Dr. Catherine Barrett has spent her career on both sides of abuse. Early on, she assessed sex offenders, sexually violent predators, and people found not guilty by reason of insanity. Today she consults for attorneys in family court, mostly for parents at risk of losing custody of their kids, and teaches future therapists at USC to recognize coercive control. Catherine was al...

I found Nick Pollard, known online as 'The People Displeaser,' through his Instagram reels, and three days later we were recording this conversation. Nick is a coach and recovering people pleaser who survived a brutal childhood, three divorces, and an addiction that nearly killed him. He came out the other side with ideas that a lot of people find hard to hear. We talk about how people-p...

This one is personal. When I was waking up from NXIVM, Raniere and the people around him were turning on my wife Bonnie and trying to destroy our marriage. At one point she asked me where she stood in all of it. I checked in with myself, deeply, and I gave her my answer. The cult saw that answer as weakness. Last week in New York, someone asked me about that moment on a podcast, and it brought bac...

You're sure you know who the enemy is. You've seen the evidence. You've read the comments. But what if the fight itself is the product? In NXIVM, Raniere kept us busy fighting each other so none of us looked up at what he was doing. I'm watching the same pattern play out on a massive scale, and most people are too inflamed to notice. So I want to ask you a question I think very...

For thirteen episodes, you've heard from the people Bentinho Massaro did this to. This episode is different. Carol Merchasin isn't a survivor, she's a lawyer, and some people call her 'The Cult Assassin.' If this conversation resonates, watch my documentary on narcissistic abuse, 'Narcissist's Playbook: Empathy Not Included'  www.narcissistsplaybook.com Caro...

This is a crossover episode between WTF Is on My Mind and Remember Your Greatness.  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/remember-your-greatness-with-mark-vicente/id1838356198 People have watched me go from What the Bleep Do We Know?! to Narcissism, Cults, and Dark Psychology, and some have asked what the two have to do with each other. This episode is my answer. Narcissism is, in essence, the eg...

Inst@Guru is an investigative series examining Bentinho Massaro, a Dutch-born spiritual influencer, and the high-control dynamics inside his organization. It's built around the accounts of three former members who spent years close to him: Jacqueline Graham, Keilan McNeil, and Jade Alectra. Each brings their own texts, memories, and evidence to build a full picture of what actually happened,...

I've been sitting with a theory for a while now: that dissociation isn't just what happens to survivors; it might be the actual cornerstone of narcissism itself. Not just what a narcissist does to the people around them, but something disconnected inside of them too, from their own shame, their own actions, maybe their own humanity. Watch Narcissist's Playbook: https://narcissistspl...

Narcissist's Playbook is out now and available to rent at https://narcissistsplaybook.uscreen.io/ From July 24th to 26th, we held our Narcissist's Playbook launch weekend, and Dr. Ramani Durvasula was one of our featured speakers. I got to sit down with her for this conversation, and this time we didn't talk about the narcissists. We talked about the survivors and the road back to t...

Dr. Jamie Zuckerman and I sat down to talk about our film, Narcissist's Playbook. https://www.drjaimezuckerman.com/ Dr. Zuckerman is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in narcissistic abuse, and she's seen the film. In this conversation, we get into why my team and I spent five years making it, my own experience in NXIVM, and how it shaped this project, and why we brought s...

This is episode 12 of Inst@Guru: Bentinho Massaro, an ongoing deep dive investigation into the world of Dutch spiritual influencer Bentinho Massaro and the people inside it. Gaby Petris Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@UCvHpiQAiTKxoodufKO5_Viw The text messages continue. This episode is mostly Jade Alectra’s, and what you're going to see is her mind and her instincts getting dismantled in rea...

Silvana was working at Gaia, deep in a healing process, surrounded by a spiritual community, when she was introduced to Bentinho Massaro through what looked like an ordinary birthday dinner. Within days, there was a yoga class, tacos, a hot tub, truth or dare, and a text message she describes as the most manipulative thing she has ever read in her life. She didn't fall for it. But in this epi...

This is episode 10 of Inst@Guru: Bentinho Massaro, an ongoing deep dive investigation into the world of Dutch spiritual influencer Bentinho Massaro and the people inside it. The damning text messages continue. This episode is Keilan McNeil's. He reads through two text threads that show a side of Bentinho Massaro that his followers rarely, if ever, see. The first is a group chat in which Benti...

For the next few episodes, our three defectors, Jacqueline Graham, Keilan McNeil, and Jade Alectra, are going to read out their private text messages with Bentinho and the group. What you're going to see is the side of him that his community never sees, the version that exists behind closed doors. This episode belongs mostly to Jacqueline. She reads through a cascade of messages sent to her a...

Evan Rachel Wood has been through it. The abuse. The smear campaigns. The legal battles. The silencing. And she came out the other side still talking. We sat down shortly after she watched the latest cut of Narcissist's Playbook, my documentary film that she is featured in, and we didn't hold back. www.narcissistsplaybook.com The conversation covers how narcissistic abuse actually works...

One of the recurring defenses from people still inside Bentinho Massaro's circle is that the people who have spoken out, Jacqueline, Keilan, and Jade, simply didn't understand the Law of One teachings. That they weren't advanced enough. That if they had truly grasped what was being offered, they would have seen things differently. So we spoke to someone who knows the teachings well....

We pick up where we left off in Part 1. A kitchen in Ecuador. Two women looking at each other across an island with empty eyes. What follows is five months of Jade Alectra's life across four countries: Panama, Mexico, Costa Rica, the Yucatan - and through experiences that are among the most disturbing in this entire series. In Part Two, Jade describes the second r*pe, a meditation played loud...

Jade Alectra was a D1 athlete, a yoga teacher with 75,000 followers, a feature in Oprah Magazine, and a meditation practice she had built from scratch. None of that protected her. In this episode, Jade begins the story of how she was recruited into Bentinho Massaro's inner circle - not through his teachings, but through the women around him. What follows is one of the most detailed accounts o...

This is part of my ongoing deep-dive investigation into the world of Bentinho Massaro - a Dutch spiritual influencer with millions of followers and a story that goes far beyond what's visible on his carefully curated social media. I've been documenting this for over four years. This is Keilan Part Two. In Part One, we watched Keilan McNeil get pulled in. In Part Two, we go inside the mac...

A note before you listen: this episode was recorded before I left for the Netherlands. I just spent seven days there shooting with the Three Amigos, Jacqueline Graham, Keilan McNeil, Jade Alectra and Ivo van Woerden, along with a number of other people who are essential to telling this story. A lot is coming. But first, this. Ivo van Woerden is a Dutch journalist who has spent the better part of f...

For over four years I've been documenting the world of Bentinho Massaro - a Dutch spiritual influencer with millions of followers and a very dark story behind the public image. This is my deep dive investigation. We've heard from Jacqueline Graham in Episodes 1 and 2. Now it's time to hear from Keilan McNeil. Keilan's entry point into Bentinho's world is completely differe...

In Part One, we met Jacqueline Graham, a Canadian mother of three, a lifelong spiritual seeker, and the woman who would become Bentinho Massaro's girlfriend. We watched her get drawn in: the love bombing, the pedestaling, the first cruelties, the money handed over in Panama. This episode is about what happened after she decided to go all in. "All In" covers the full arc of Jacquelin...

I've seen this before. Not something like this. Not a similar version of this. This. The same playbook. The same psychological architecture. Just a different face. For the video version of this podcast, head over to Youtube. My name is Mark Vicente. I'm a filmmaker and a former member of NXIVM, the cult run by Keith Raniere, who is currently serving 120 years in federal prison. I was one...

THIS IS PART 2. In Part 1, I sat down with Margot Lane and Mara Moon - two former bandmates of Corey Feldman's Corey's Angels -  to hear how they were drawn in: the love bombing, the false promises, the body shaming, and the slow erosion of their boundaries. If you haven't seen Part 1 yet, go there first. Part 2 is where things escalate. On tour, the abuse ramps up: sleep deprivatio...